Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 16, 1999

1999-05-16 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- With six months left to run his re-election campaign, Mayor Willie Brown's performance rating continues to erode as voter irritation with Muni escalates, a new Examiner-KTVU Channel 2 poll shows.

The poll found that 71 percent - nearly three in four of those surveyed - were unhappy with Brown's job performance; 29 percent of those surveyed gave Brown a positive performance rating. In an Examiner-KTVU poll in September, 59 percent were unhappy with his performance and 41 percent were satisfied.

Despite the slippage, said pollster Del Ali, Brown has a strong chance at winning a second term unless his challengers - only one is declared, the others are considered possible contenders - gain considerable ground between now and the November election.

"A vast majority of voters just don't think Willie Brown's doing a good job," Ali said. "By the same token, they don't like the other choices they're offered. In the end, voters may hold their noses and decide to vote for the devil they've got."

Campaigns usually don't kick into high gear until Labor Day, and an unexpected event could turn things upside down. In the last mayoral race, that happened when incumbent Mayor Frank Jordan jumped into a shower - naked - with two male DJs from Los Angeles in a campaign stunt captured on film that slowed his momentum and helped secure Brown's victory.

The Examiner-KTVU poll of 628 frequent San Francisco voters was conducted last Monday-Wednesday by Research 2000 of Rockville, Md. The error margin is 4 percentage points.

If the election were held today, the poll found 34 percent would vote for Brown, 19 percent for Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, 18 percent for Jordan and 9 percent for Clint Reilly, a businessman and former political consultant. Twenty percent of those surveyed were undecided.

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Of the three challengers named in the poll, only Reilly has declared his candidacy. Ammiano, who came in No. 1 in his race for the board in November, said he won't run, though his declaration has drawn skepticism. The outgoing message on his home answering machine Friday says, "No, no, Mayor. I'm running - the Bay to Breakers."

Jordan, whose campaign against Brown four years ago was run by Reilly, said Friday he will decide by the first week of June whether to enter the race. However, he already has a campaign spiel down, eager to hit Brown on what he sees as flamboyance without substance. Reilly also has taken that tone.

In addition, Supervisor Leland Yee, chairman of the board's high-profile Finance and Labor Committee, has talked of joining the race. Yee said Thursday he hasn't ruled out a run. Candidates have until Aug. 6 to declare.

David Lee of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee and one of the best political number crunchers in San Francisco, said this of the poll results: "Willie Brown's clearly ahead of the rest of them, but he's no shoo-in. It's very early in the campaign. A lot can happen."

Brown said Friday that he's not taking anything for granted.

"Obviously it concerns me," he said of the poll numbers. But Brown, who has been an elected official since 1964, hasn't lost a campaign since his first attempt at office in 1962 and said he's used to a good fight.

"All my political life I've been fighting an uphill battle," said Brown, who is ratcheting up his campaign, touting his record and securing endorsements from political and labor groups.

Much of Brown's uphill battle will be to convince voters The City's Muni transit system has improved on his watch. Brown vowed in his 1995 campaign for mayor to fix Muni within 100 days of taking office.

But the poll showed that 16 percent of those surveyed say the mayor has done an excellent or good job of improving the system. And, when asked to rate Muni, 58 percent said it was poor and 29 percent called it fair. The transit agency's negative rating jumped 11 percentage points since a similar Examiner-KTVU poll in September.

In polling parlance, "excellent" and "good" are considered positives, while "fair" and "poor" are viewed as negative.

Brown scores on jobs, economy&lt;

While those in the new survey slammed Brown on Muni, he was given a thumbs up for helping create jobs and improve the economy - the issue those polled listed as the most important factor in determining their pick for mayor.

*Brown continues to receive low marks for his handling of the homeless, with three of four voters rating it fair or poor.

*Two of three voters perceive the parking situation in The City has worsened during Brown's tenure.

*Those surveyed split almost evenly on how well the mayor has handled crime.

Pollster Ali said it looks inevitable the mayor will land in a runoff in December because he won't be able to secure a majority vote in November. If Brown wins a second four-year term, he'll reverse the trend of his two predecessors, both of whom lost re-election bids.

Bruzzone, a GOP stalwart, said he might vote for Brown - the kingpin of the Democratic machine in California. Bruzzone looks at a cleaned up Civic Center Plaza and the mayor's efforts to keep UC-San Francisco in town as good reasons to at least consider an endorsement. He said the mayor also is starting to understand that quality-of-life issues matter, but isn't convinced the administration's new emphasis on beefing up the police force, cleaning the streets and fixing Muni will last.

"He's now becoming concerned about the issues he probably thought were boring," Bruzzone said. But whether he continues those efforts into a second term, if there is one, is "one of my concerns."

Richard Williams, 60, a retired warehouseman on a fixed income who participated in the poll, describes himself as a liberal Democrat but sounds more like a conservative in his disenchantment with a proliferation of homeless people on the streets and roads that are more congested. For that, the Civic Center-area resident said, the mayor won't get his backing.

"He's doing a fair job, I mean we're still afloat, aren't we? But we can do better," Williams said.

"I see him embodying San Francisco - his style, his personality, his fairness in trying to include everyone," said Barnes, 59, a communications professor who lives on Twin Peaks.

Charismatic but arrogant&lt;

The poll showed Brown's charisma is a plus, finding that 41 percent noted it as his most positive attribute. On the other hand, 46 percent listed arrogance when asked his single-most negative attribute.

Aside from personality, Barnes said she is impressed with the mayor's focus on cleaning the streets of litter and grime. "If the streets aren't clean, he tries to get them that way. He takes pride in The City, and that's important to me."

Another quality-of-life issue at center stage in the mayor's race is Muni, the public transit agency that moves 680,000 riders a day.

Confidence in Muni plunges&lt;

The poll showed what little confidence riders had in the system has plummeted since September's survey, which came a month after the infamous meltdown of the Metro system.

Muni's approval rating went from 20 percent in September to 11 percent in the new survey. That's after Brown brought in a new Muni general manager, hired an outside consultant to help put Muni back on track and pumped millions more dollars into the ailing system, with promises of more money in the upcoming budget.

"Clearly people do not think there's a change for the better," said Jim Chappell, president of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, a civic group that has joined the riders advocacy group Rescue Muni in pushing a November ballot measure to overhaul Muni.

"Muni ought to be getting better," Chappell said. "A huge amount of money has been thrown at it, and it ought to be showing, but it isn't. The system is in crisis."

And that, said Chappell, should grab the attention of Brown or any other mayoral candidate. "This is something people care about greatly," he said.

Michael Burns, the new Muni general manager Brown hired from Philadelphia as a sort of knight on a white horse to rescue the operation, was somewhat surprised by the poll numbers and the dip from last fall. Muni's own tracking of service has shown improvements, he said.

On-time performance, for example, is up 50 percent, and there are more streetcars in service. New drivers are being hired, and street inspectors, who help keep the buses from bunching, have been brought on board. Muni's annual budget, Burns noted, has gone from $300 million three years ago to what will be $367 million in the new budget, which starts July 1. Still, Burns understands the voters' unhappiness.

"First of all," he said, "the product has to get better, the service has got to be better. People have to experience it" for the attitude of the public to turn around. "Secondly, we have to do a better job of telling and showing that it is better."

But Chappell said on Thursday morning he again endured a frustratingly long wait for a Muni bus.

Public transit is key issue&lt;

Brown readily admits the transit system is a key measure for voters. He is confident that improvements have been made, with more on the way, but he said other areas of city government also deserve recognition.

Brown said he will try to convince voters that his record is strong, and will point to spurring plans for a new gay and lesbian community center, kick-starting a pedestrian safety effort, convincing UC to build a second campus in San Francisco and opening housing on Treasure Island, among other initiatives.

If those are accomplishments, why haven't they resonated with voters? Brown points to an unforgiving local press corps, which he said relishes beating him up and leaving the local electorate with an uneasy impression.

"I get great coverage in the New York Times. I get great coverage in national magazines. I get s- - - coverage at home," he said.&lt;